Today is the first day of school in Broward county. This is the earliest start date ever, a full week earlier than last year. Everyone hates the early start. It’s disrupting vacation plans, hurting summer camps, vacation spots, and other businesses which depend on kids out of school during the summer.

Why? So they can have more time to prepare for the FCATs.

The FCATs in their current form need to be eliminated. Schools no longer teach the students, they just prepare them for the FCATs. FCATs aren’t about learning – they’re about school funding. The schools scramble to raise FCAT scores for their own rating & to keep up their funding, not so the kids will learn. As a result the kids don’t learn anything other than what they need to pass the FCATs. This is why Florida’s school system is one of the worst in the US.